As Fiserv looks to mend customer relationships and rebuild its business, its management team is embarking on what CEO Mike Lyons called a “transformation agenda” using artificial intelligence to boost productivity.
The two-year effort, partnering with IBM for technical expertise, will initially target five business areas, including its signature Clover point of sale business, executives said last week in news that was overshadowed by Fiserv announcing a major financial and operational “reset” of its business.
The “Project Elevate” AI initiative carries a “simple” goal, Lyons said Oct. 29 on a call with equity analysts: “Become a higher quality, more productive business by embedding AI in everything we do, including providing a better experience to our clients.”
IBM and Fiserv – long-term technology partners – will leverage “the same playbook and the same team” IBM used when seeking AI-driven efficiencies, Lyons said.
Fiserv will initially deploy AI on sales; client onboarding; client service; human resources and finance; and Clover, Fiserv’s California-based point of sale business. “While our work is just beginning, early proof points demonstrate the program’s strong potential, and we expect compelling returns on our investment,” the CEO said.
Fiserv plans to detail specific costs and benefits associated with the AI project with its fourth-quarter results and at an investor day event scheduled for the first half of 2026.
Lyons and new Chief Financial Officer Paul Todd were unavailable for interviews about the company’s reset, a Fiserv spokesperson said Monday.
Clover is at the center of much of Fiserv’s current turbulence as the Milwaukee-based processor reverses some of its prior pricing changes and fees.
Clover’s 2025 revenue is now expected to be $3.3 billion, which is $200 million less than the prior guidance, Lyons said during the quarterly call. Clover will also see lower, 10% revenue growth in the fourth quarter, “reflecting the deprioritization of certain short term revenue initiatives, including the elimination of certain fees in Q4 that were initiated a year ago and are no longer consistent with our business strategy,” he said.
Fiserv’s biggest focus at Clover is “a full overhaul of the client experience,” Lyons said, referencing work by the team led by Chief Operating Officer Takis Georgakopoulos, who will become a Fiserv co-president on Dec. 1.
“We see just a tremendous opportunity across Clover and really across our platforms and gateways and organization layers to apply AI in an effective way,” Lyons said.
Management has conceded that Clover price increases were a mistake and is reversing them, Mizuho Securities analyst Dan Dolev wrote in a client note Oct. 29. “Indeed, our checks showed that some ISOs (independent sales organizations) were pushing back on this price increase, shying away from Clover,” Dolev wrote.
Fiserv acquired Clover in 2019 with its $22 billion purchase of First Data, where former Fiserv CEO Frank Bisignano had held the top job.
Companies that have expanded rapidly through mergers and acquisitions, like Fiserv, struggle to adapt to new technology trends, Dominic Ball, a stock researcher with Rothschild & Co Redburn, told Bloomberg Television on Friday.
“It’s tough for a company that has grown through M&A to try to consolidate and focus an R&D budget on new tech,” Ball said, citing the impacts of agentic commerce and stablecoins across the payments industry in just the past six months. “It’s really difficult to innovate and change with this new tech when you’ve done a lot of M&A.”
Clover’s long-term organic revenue growth is likely “close to the market, or around 10%, which is a far cry from 30% expansion aspirations,” William Blair equity analysts Andrew Jeffrey and Cristopher Kennedy wrote Wednesday in a client note, adding that Fiserv’s troubles are company specific.
“Clover’s apparent lack of real innovation, evidenced by reversal of some fees, is probably a positive for truly innovative companies like Block and Shift4,” the William Blair analysts wrote. “We remain bullish on these names and argue they will benefit from a zero-sum competitive shift.”
Fiserv’s share price has been sliced nearly in half, 49%, since Lyons announced the financial shortfalls and a major management shuffle, which will see the company gain two co-presidents, a new financial chief and three new directors.
Bisignano – who now leads the Social Security Administration and is the Internal Revenue Service CEO – blames the stock’s steep drop on Lyons’ tenure, Bloomberg News reported Thursday, citing “people familiar with his thinking.”
That’s not how some analysts see it. “The magnitude of the reset speaks to the lack of transparency that the prior strategy/model and management followed,” RBC Capital Markets analyst Daniel Perlin wrote Monday in a client note.
